The Martial Unity

The assassin coughed blood as Rui pummeled him with close-quarter attacks with his knees and elbows. He struggled to get away but Rui did not let up even a moment of respite. Even as he did his best to block Rui's attacks, he couldn't help but wonder how he had even reached this level.

His initial two sets of attacks were effective, and they bypassed his guard and landed on his vitals, piercing his flesh. Things had been proceeding according to plan, when suddenly, the target of his attacks had disappeared in the face of his attacks in an illusion, appearing right in front of him!

Rui had used his trusty Phantom Step technique to feint a step back when instead dove forward with a flying knee kick. Phantom Step was a technique whose effectiveness also depended on its application. When the feints of the technique were used to show the opponent what they wanted to see and what they expected to see, then the technique was more than thrice as effective as normal!

The resulting outcome was a drastic shift in reality that entirely caught the assassin off-guard on top of the titanic damage that had been inflicted by a powerful attack striking his solar plexus. The fact that he had not seen even a shadow of the attack incoming meant that he had not defended against it passively or actively. He took that attack purely with his raw durability, causing massive damage internally that left him reeling.

Even though Rui had endured several bleeding flesh wounds, his movements didn't indicate any sluggishness as his healing factor had already staved off the most debilitating parts of the wounds and was already on its way to recovering most of the damage he had sustained.

On the other hand, despite having endured only a single attack, the damage was far more debilitating than anything Rui had endured. The fact that Rui's opponent had not defended passively or actively means that he was basically withstanding the might of multiple Squire-level techniques with his body alone.

Furthermore, his Martial body's configuration did not place too much weight on toughness and durability, as opposed to speed and flexibility. Thus, the damage it had withstood was tremendous. The biggest problem was the fact that Rui had struck his solar plexus with that attack, directly striking his diaphragm and shocking it so hard with damage that it had become paralyzed for precious several seconds. The assassin was literally unable to breathe at all for that duration, let alone activate a breathing technique to use in combat.

Although it only lasted several seconds, that was a world of difference for Martial Squires. It was more than five minutes in the perspectives of both Martial Squires!

By the end of those five minutes, the assassin was battered with bruises and wounds that had already begun to swell up even as Rui whaled waves of elbows and knees down on his opponent.

"ENOUGH!" The man bellowed once he was able to activate his breathing techniques to outspeed Rui again. "My Curving Lance style will not be belittled! My attacks are as nimble as the winds, yet as sharp as lightning!"

He rushed forward with far greater speed and power than before as he did not dare hold back. A dreadful amount of menacing pressure rose from him as he channeled his rage and fury from being pummeled like a punching bag for five minutes into his attacks. They were so fast they almost disappeared in the eyes of Rui!

Yet that alone was not enough.

CRACK CRACK CRACK!

"Huh?" The assassin's eyes widened before he even realized what had happened before he could even feel pain.

An expression of horror rose onto his face as he glanced at his fingers, which had been broken and twisted in a grotesque figure after clashing with Rui's elbow, getting crushed in the process.

BAM BAM BAM!

Rui exploited the moment of shock

('Your Martial body does not lend itself well to toughness conditioning. Your fingers are not too tough, and that is why you keep targeting vitals and softer fleshy regions of the body. If you hit a bone, your fingers will be severely damaged getting crushed by the power of your own attack,') Rui mused as he relentlessly attacked his opponent.

He had noticed that his opponent only struck softer parts of the body that were not reinforced by bone or tough muscles. This wouldn't be done unless he had no choice, since it only restricted the number of striking targets he could strike, making him even easier to predict. The VOID algorithm greedily consumed this pattern with its pattern recognition processing protocols, creating a more fleshed-out prediction model.

Rui didn't need to avoid his attacks. He needed to use his opponent's speed against him by shifting at the very last second to cause his opponent's attack to crash into hard bone instead of a fleshy weak point.

This was one of the counters and adaptations to his Martial Art that Rui had come up with. The adaptive evolution model was something that Rui himself had created and was nothing short of a crystallization of his expertise in understanding what worked against what styles, and how it could be used against them. While he had formally laid out an official adaptive evolution model for other fighters who were training in the VOID algorithm, it was for the sake of others. He himself did not need it. He was the adaptive evolution model, in a sense.

He himself was part of the VOID algorithm himself.

Rui's eyes widened as he felt he came across a profound realization and epiphany.

('I am… part of my Martial Art?') The thought thundered across his mind.

For a moment, the fight faded away from his mind as he immersed himself in his Martial Path.

The boundless path extended seemingly eternally into the distance, yet he felt as though he had just taken a step forward deeper than he ever had before!